Americans are a very obedient people. I wouldn't really have known this if I hadn't traveled and if I didn't have to explain to my husband sometimes why it is people will put money in an envelope to pay for parking when there is nobody there to check. I will wait at a red light long after it has become clear that it must be broken and that my children will tell stories of growing up at a red light rather than cross it even if the road hasn't had any cross traffic in living memory.
One of the reasons that people are so angered and intransigent about "illegal immigration" is that in the American mind, the existence of a law is all the reason that you need to follow it. This, of course, is a gross over generalization - I obviously don't mean it to apply to corporations, despite their status as people. However, I hear over and over again people resorting to the argument that the fact that something is illegal is how we know it is wrong. That we have to follow rules, even if they are not good rules, simply because they are rules.
That's an error though. We make things illegal that we at some point (or at least those who make the laws) thought were wrong; it's not the illegality that makes it wrong, it's the other way around. Again, gross over generalization, but it's a blog post for heaven's sake, buy my book if you want me to go into it all (note to self: write book in case anyone calls my bluff). The wrong that I am referring to is the wrong done to power by the violation of the law. Then, we the people, internalize this set of rules as simply wrong.
Marijuana is a perfect example. Many people are horrified by the idea of marijuana being legalized because it must be wrong because it was illegal. Meanwhile, the real wrong was that which was perceived by tobacco when they saw that marijuana sales could negatively impact their own. Or the wrong was that hippies and young people didn't seem like they were scared enough of the government and this was a great way to get some of that fear back. Or it could be more sinister still but...none of these are moral wrongs, these are damages or benefits to money and power.
In any case, my point being twofold. The first, made above, is that illegality (or legality) doesn't determine right from wrong. It's not meant to prevent, it's meant to create a system to punish rule-breaking. Nobody truly believes that making murder illegal is actually preventing murder; it simply gives us a thing that we can do when murder has happened so that we aren't left reinventing the wheel every time. It also encapsulates our already existing idea of what is unacceptable, it didn't make it unacceptable.
My second point is this: we have not just a right, but a duty to disobey the law when it is wrong. It's written in to the Declaration of Independence that when in the course of human events things are really f*cked up, then we the people should change them. I'm paraphrasing, but it's pretty close. When people sat down at the Woolworth's lunch counter, segregation was the law of the land. Many would have argued that no matter what, people should have obeyed that law simply because it was the law. That kind of logic and we would still be waiting for the gods to show us the future in the entrails of chickens.
Disobedience is part of democracy; it requires the ability to critically evaluate. I can't break our shared set of rules for my personal gain (again, I hope some corporation is reading this blog so they can take this to their very human-like heart), but I can violate them if they are unethical. If we don't practice this, it atrophies and we become timid and democracy loses whatever it had to offer. If the people have no will, there can be no possibility for a government to be guided by it. Also, if we don't practice it, we don't know when it is appropriate and so we rebel without direction often causing damage. Law then loses its moral authority and becomes simply authoritarian.
If we do not practice disobedience, it is substituted by apathy or blind ideology. The face of civic life becomes completely smooth and impenetrable, without hand holds or possibility for interaction, like a sheer wall of polished granite. If we wait until then, it will take a visionary to chisel even the smallest impression upon the stone and the rest of us will spend our whole lives pushing it with our shoulders to no avail.
